Kit Harington Says “Mistakes Were Made” Making a “Rushed” ‘Game of Thrones’ Season 8

Kit Harington is opening up about his feelings concerning the final season of HBO’s Game of Thrones.

The Jon Snow actor says that “mistakes were made” when creating the ending to the global phenomena, noting it may have been “rushed,” but also that he’s not sure there was another option given the cast and crew’s exhaustion.

“I think if there was any fault with the end of Thrones, is that we were all so fucking tired, we couldn’t have gone on longer,” Harington said in a new GQ interview about him joining season three of HBO’s acclaimed finance drama Industry. “And so I understand some people thought it was rushed, and I might agree with them. But I’m not sure there was any alternative. I look at pictures of me in that final season, and I look exhausted. I look spent. I didn’t have another season in me.”

Regarding the backlash to the series finale episode, Harington replied, “Everyone is entitled to their opinion. I think there were mistakes made, story-wise, towards the end maybe. I think there were some interesting choices that didn’t quite work.”

Harington also discussed HBO’s shelved Thrones spinoff, titled Snow, that was in development for a period of time. While the actor declined to say what the storyline was about (“because it starts a whole thing [online]”), he did explain his thinking behind working on it and why it ultimately didn’t work out.

“What I can tell you is it was HBO that came to me and said, ‘Would you consider this?’” he recalled. “My first reaction was ‘no.’ And then I thought there could be an interesting and important story about the soldier after the war. I felt that there might be something left to say and a story left to tell in a pretty limited way. We spent a couple of years back and forth developing it. And it just didn’t … nothing got us excited enough. In the end, I kind of backed out and said, ‘I think if we push this any further and keep developing it we could end up with something that’s not good. And that’s the last thing we all want.'”

He also added that he wanted to not get pigeonholed by playing the Thrones character again. “It’s kind of essential to do my job, for people to come and see me and not see Jon Snow,” he said.

Industry season three debuted on HBO on Sunday. Game of Thrones spinoff House of the Dragon, meanwhile, just wrapped its second season.